It was on a particularly cold Canadian winter evening that an unexpected skid of sugarcane brought a food bank to life.

The Seva Food Bank in Mississauga had just received our weekly shipment of food from our central distribution center. Among the expected boxes of soup, cereal, pasta and produce was a full skid of long yellowish bamboo-like sticks. Most of our young volunteers had no idea what these wooden sticks were and why we would be receiving them. Amongst the confusion, one of our well-traveled volunteers took one look at the skid and suggested that it might be sugarcane.

Knowing what it was still didn’t answer the question of “how do you eat it?” Running short on time before the shift began, our volunteers left out some the sugarcane sticks in our sorting area where our clients could help themselves to whatever they wanted. Continue reading →